CHARLES GRAY (ACTOR)

'Charles Gray' (August 29 1928 - March 7 2000) was an English actor, born 'Donald Marshall Gray' in Bournemouth, Hampshire, (now Bournemouth, Dorset)
Donald Gray attended Bournemouth School alongside Benny Hill, whose school had been evacuated to the same buildings, during the Second World War. Some of his friends remember that his bedroom walls were plastered with pictures of film stars. He began his stage experience at the theatre club next to Bournemouth's Palace Court Hotel, where he was a last-minute cast replacement in ''The Beaux Stratagem''. Donald surprised everyone, even himself, with the quality of his performance.
When Donald moved away from Bournemouth in the late 1950s, his parents remained at the family home, until their deaths. On becoming a professional actor, Donald had to change his name, as there was already an actor Donald Gray. He chose Charles Gray partly because Charles was the name of his maternal grandfather, partly because he had a close friend named Charles, and partly because he thought it sounded nice.
He appears as Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the James Bond movie ''Diamonds Are Forever'' (1971). In the earlier ''You Only Live Twice'' (1967), he had played a British agent, Henderson, making him one of a small number of actors to have played a villain and a Bond ally in the series.
He is perhaps best known for portraying The Criminologist (the narrator) in ''The Rocky Horror Picture Show'' and a similar character, Judge Oliver Wright, in its 1981 sequel ''Shock Treatment''. He is also remembered as the satanist Mocata in the Hammer film ''The Devil Rides Out'' (1968).
He was Mycroft Holmes in both the 1976 film ''The Seven-Per-Cent Solution'' and opposite Jeremy Brett's Sherlock in four episodes of the Granada Television series ''The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes''. In two episodes of the final Brett series, ''The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes'', he had leading roles as Mycroft. The first was due to Watson actor Edward Hardwicke being busy on another film project, and the second was due to Brett's illness.
Other television appearances includes Dennis Potter's ''Blackeyes'' , ''The New Statesman'', ''Thriller'', plus a range of Shakespearean roles.
He regularly provided the voice for Jack Hawkins, who had his voice box removed to combat throat cancer, since the two had similar voices. An example of this is in the film ''Theatre of Blood''. Gray himself died of cancer in 2000.

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